“The President of the United States has a unique opportunity and responsibility to lead this nation. President Obama has acknowledged the challenges we face, but – thus far – he has done nothing to offer solutions. Now, worse, his political organization is colluding with special-interest allies across the country to demagogue reform-minded governors who are making the tough choices that the President is avoiding.

“This is not the way to begin an ‘adult conversation’ about solutions to the big challenges facing our country. Rather than inciting protests against those who speak honestly about the challenges we face, the President and his advisers should lead.

“When the American people watched the people of Greece take to the streets to protest cuts to unsustainable government programs, they worried it might foreshadow events in our nation’s distant future – but today, we see the same sort of protests on the streets of Madison, fueled by President Obama’s own political machine”

If you had any doubts about Stanley Kurtz, Obama’s actions today should dispel them:

American politics just keeps getting more polarized. Be assured that Obama wants it that way. I argue in Radical-in-Chief that Obama’s long-term hope is to divide America along class lines (roughly speaking, tax payers versus tax beneficiaries). Obama’s attack on the Supreme Court at his 2010 State of the Union address, his offensive against the Chamber of Commerce, his exhortation to Hispanics to punish their enemies, and several similar moves were all efforts to jump-start a populist movement of the left. Like his socialist organizing mentors, Obama believes that a country polarized along class lines will eventually realign American politics sharply to the left. Yet the entire strategy is based on the need for an activated, populist movement of the left. So far, Obama has failed to create such a movement. His expensive economic agenda has provoked a populist counter-movement of the right instead: Obama’s nightmare.

Now, however, Obama may belatedly be getting his wish. The very success of the Tea Party is calling forth an opposing movement of the left. Obama’s exhortations may have failed to polarize the country along class lines, but his policies have finally provoked the long-sought battle. The once-dormant legions of Obama’s group, Organizing for America, have now been activated. This is the moment they were created for.

Hope for riots and change the nation forever? That’s the wish. Read the rest.

One of the great ironies revealed by the global recession that began in 2008 is that Communist Party-ruled China may be doing a better job managing capitalism’s crisis than the democratically elected U.S. government. Beijing’s stimulus spending was larger, infinitely more effective at overcoming the slowdown, and directed at laying the infrastructural tracks for further economic expansion.

Heh. Translation: the Chinese Communists are superior to Obama! That’s why he bowed last night. More:

As Western democracies shuffle wheezily forward, China’s economy roars along at a steady clip, having lifted some half a billion people out of poverty over the past three decades and rapidly creating the world’s largest middle class to provide an engine for long-term domestic consumer demand. Sure, there’s massive social inequality, but there always is in a capitalist system. (Income inequality rates in the U.S. are some of the worst in the industrialized world, and here more people are falling into poverty than are being raised out of it – the 43 million Americans officially designated as living in poverty in 2009 was the highest number in the 51 years that records have been kept.)

Meanwhile, the taxpayers fed rather ungrateful dinner guests last night. Michael Prell on what was published before the breaking of bread by the truly state-run Chicom press:

”If China becomes the world’s No. 1 nation … .” That was the headline in the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, The People’s Daily, on the eve of Chinese President Hu Jintao’s state visit to Washington. The article went on to boast how “China’s emergence is increasingly shifting to debate over how the world will treat China, which is the world No. 1 and has overtaken the U.S.”

A story like this does not appear by accident in the official Chinese Communist Party newspaper on the eve of a state visit to the world’s (current) No. 1 power, the United States.

In case you’ve forgotten, Xiaobo received the Nobel Peace Prize* last fall. Unlike the previous winner, since he sits in a Chinese prison, he was unable to claim the prize. Via wikipedia, a choice Xiaobo quote:

Modernization means whole-sale westernization, choosing a human life is choosing Western way of life. Difference between Western and Chinese governing system is humane vs in-humane, there’s no middle ground… Westernization is not a choice of a nation, but a choice for the human race.

No wonder the Chinese government hates him, no? Xiaobo has said it would take 300 years for China to catch up to the Western world.

So while the head of Chinese government sit at the White House tonight, eating Maine Lobster, rib eye and “the best of America,” I will think of Xiaobo and wonder if he’s lucky enough to have fish heads in his rice porridge tonight courtesy Hu and his minions.

Jay Nordlinger calls this state dinner a “stain” upon our honor. (H/t: Pundette, who asks, “And we’re giving a dictator a state dinner why?”). Nordlinger:

… America is a nation that’s supposed to stand for something — for freedom, and human dignity, above all. We’re not supposed to be like every other nation. We’re supposed to be exceptional. Different. A beacon unto man.

[…]

American honor has been stained this week. A degree of shame rests upon this nation. We should hope that the prisoners and the strugglers — who want nothing more than what you and I are damn lucky to have — forgive us.

I hope someone chokes on the damn apple pie.

Related: Pundette on the wizard of smart Senate majority leader’s blooper: Hu is a dictator. (I only wish it had been Biden.)

Only 38 percent of respondents said Obama deserves to be reelected, even though a majority of voters hold a favorable view of him on a personal level. Forty-four percent said they will vote to oust him, and 13 percent said they will consider voting for someone else.

It’s Obama’s policies that are hurting him right now. By a 13-point margin, voters are down on the health care law. In an especially troubling sign, more than half of self-identified independents — 54 percent — have an unfavorable opinion of the law, compared with just 38 percent who have a favorable opinion.

Heh. The horror, the horror! Maybe Michelle will be named as a defendent in the next civil-rights violation charge, a la Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush? He only let me have one new prayer rug, but she took away my ice cream!

Jen-Ru explores the bombshell testimony of Chris Coates, the DOJ head of the Black Panther trial team and wonders how the Obama administration will be able to sidestep the coming wave of supoenas. The media can no longer ignore the story. She writes:

Try as Democrats might to ignore the blockbuster evidence, Coates’s testimony was a game changer. Granted, the testimony contained information already revealed in conservative outlets and by former DOJ attorney J. Christian Adams. But Coates confirmed these facts and added a wealth of new details. An African American attorney and his mother (who also works for DOJ) were harassed for working on a voting case brought against an African American defendant. Obama’s deputy assistant general for civil rights, Julie Fernandez, repeatedly told attorneys not to enforce Section 8 or bring cases against minority defendants. Coates’s supervisor, who directly ordered the case’s dismissal, told him to stop asking applicants if they could enforce laws in a race-neutral fashion. Coates briefed civil rights chief Thomas Perez on the hostility toward race-neutral enforcement of voting laws — before Perez feigned ignorance of such sentiments in sworn testimony. In sum, Coates’s appearance was the scandal’s tipping point.

To borrow the meme from Instapundit: They told me if I voted for John McCain, everyone wouldn’t be protected under the law…

At most marine parks in the world the animals provide the entertainment. But at the Havana aquarium last month, Fidel Castro had a couple of humans eating out of his hand and clapping like trained seals.

Castro again has an urgent need to put a smiley face on his dictatorship. The economy is in dire straits. Food is scarce, electricity is a rarity, and soap and toilet paper are luxuries. Cuba produces almost nothing and this makes it difficult to get hard currency—aka real money—which in turn makes it tough to buy from abroad. Lending sources have dried up.

If the regime is to stay in power, it needs a new source of income to pay the secret police and keep the masses in rice. The best bet is the American tourist, last seen circa 1950 exploiting the locals, according to revolutionary lore, but now needed by the regime. It wants the U.S. travel ban lifted. To prevail, Castro needs to counteract rumors that he is a dictator. Solution: a makeover in the Atlantic. In Mr. Goldberg, he no doubt recognized the perfect candidate for the job.

More:

It never seems to cross Mr. Goldberg’s mind that he is being used in a manner Communists first learned at Lenin’s knee. Or perhaps he is happy to be useful. In a follow-up post he explains that since Fidel is not as bad as Pol Pot, Cubans should stop complaining. And to demonstrate further how little he knows about the plight of the Cuban people, he says that the “release” of political prisoners “is currently being negotiated.” Wrong. Some have been exiled; some others may receive conditional parole meaning that they can be returned to prison at any time if the regime disapproves of their activities.

Mr. Goldberg is peddling his Castro interviews as serious journalism. But while he was “curious” to get a “glimpse of the great man,” he was ill-prepared for the job. Presumably he knew this, which is why he allowed Ms. Sweig to lead him around Havana by the nose.

Ouch. You can lead a liberal to kool-aid and give him a Che t-shirt, but show him nefarious reasons for Fidel’s change of heart and he won’t see logic. Such is life.

I asked him if he believed the Cuban model was still something worth exporting.

“The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore,” he said.

This struck me as the mother of all Emily Litella moments. Did the leader of the Revolution just say, in essence, “Never mind”?

I asked Julia to interpret this stunning statement for me. She said, “He wasn’t rejecting the ideas of the Revolution. I took it to be an acknowledgment that under ‘the Cuban model’ the state has much too big a role in the economic life of the country.”

Ya think?

In case you need a refresher, the AP handily summarizes the extent of “the state” in Cuba:

The state controls well over 90 percent of the economy, paying workers salaries of about $20 a month in return for free health care and education, and nearly free transportation and housing. At least a portion of every citizen’s food needs are sold to them through ration books at heavily subsidized prices.

In other words: an Obama wet dream.

Trouble in paradise:

President Raul Castro and others have instituted a series of limited economic reforms, and have warned Cubans that they need to start working harder and expecting less from the government.

Americans would do well with the same message, eh?

Allahpundit posits the theory that maybe this is ol’ Fidel’s way of reaching out and hinting that a few well-placed American dollars wouldn’t be a bad idea, i.e. loosening the embargo, and wonders if Rubio could advance the idea further. Something to consider, no?

UPDATE:

The comment thread at Hot Air is too good to pass up. Selected gems:

Reagan Smiles down from the clouds.

Hollywood collectively craps its pants.

And millions of unwashed asses in Che t-shirts are too stoned to notice.